Thursday, April 3, 2014

Where Do You Fit Into History?

Just imagine somebody in Paul’s day sitting in one of the
synagogues where he was preaching—in Pisidian Antioch, let’s say—when this
stranger from out of town, Paul, came up
to the front of the synagogue and began preaching. Would this man that was listening know the
weight of history pressing in on that moment?
Would he know that people would be studying and reading that sermon that
morning for hundreds of years to come?
That it would be recorded in the most widely read and studied and loved book
in history? What do you think? Maybe not.
But maybe some did. Luke, who
recorded that sermon in the Book of Acts (Acts 13:16-41), obviously thought it
was important—as did those who came to faith that day. But whether they knew it or not, history was being
made right in front of their eyes.

Some events are more obviously historic at the moment they
happen. For example, when the Emperor
Constantine issued the decree that stopped the horrible persecution of
Christians (the Edict of Milan, AD 314), many, many people realized immediately
that this was an historic moment. After
more than 200 years of persecution, it was suddenly ended. Many saw it as a true miracle of God. Christians had their churches and other
property returned to them, the pastors were let out of prison. They didn’t have to hide anymore. This was a huge change. It was an historic moment.

Or what about when Patrick, better known as St. Patrick, stepped
off the boat in Ireland (about AD 432).
He had been held as a slave there when he was a young man. But God called him back to the same land
where he suffered so much to preach the gospel.
That was an awesome act of obedience.
But did he or anyone else know how incredibly important this moment in
history was? Did they realize that this
simple act of obedience would lead to the salvation of a nation? And that from there, missionaries would be
sent out all over Northern Europe bringing the gospel and converting other
nations? That was an awesome moment in
history. Did they know it? Did they feel it?

Or what about when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the
Wittenberg church door (1517). Could
anyone imagine the impact that would have?
Even Luther himself wasn’t trying to make a public statement. His theses were in Latin. They were intended for debate with other
churchmen. But somebody noticed how
important they were. And that person
copied them, translated them to German, and circulated them all over the
country. Even Luther himself didn’t
realize the importance of that moment at the time. But somebody did. And because of that, history was changed, and
a tremendous blessing came to millions of people.

Or what about when the Pilgrims were on the Mayflower coming
to America (1620)? It was a terrible
crossing of the Atlantic Ocean—storms all the way. And because of it, they ended up landing
somewhere different than where they originally planned to go—right in the
middle of nowhere. That sounds more like
a disaster than a praise report. It
would have been easy to think a lot more about survival than history. But history was being made: a history that would affect the world. Because from that little community an idea
went out, an idea that would lead to an originally Christian America, and that
would make an important contribution to the great missionary movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the gospel was planted in more parts of the
world than it ever was before.

This great missionary movement included James Maxwell, who came
from England to Tainan in Taiwan in 1865.
It probably didn’t feel like a very historic moment when he was driven
out of town by people throwing rocks at him.
But he moved to Kaohsiung and stayed there long enough to plant
Christianity in Taiwan. It was an
historic moment.

Or what about the night of January 1, 1901, in dusty Topeka,
Kansas, in the U.S., when a small group of Bible students were praying to
receive the Holy Spirit—when suddenly they began to speak in tongues! This was the first time this gift had been
exercised by a group of believers for hundreds of years. Did they realize how important that moment
was? Many of them did, or at least they
realized it soon after. And from there
the Pentecostal movement spread to Los Angeles (the Azuza Street Revival) and
from there all over the world, bringing tremendous blessing to millions of
people: the Healing Revival in the
1950’s, the Charismatic Revival in the 1960’s.

So what about you?
Where do you fit into history? How
will this time, even this day we’re living in right now be remembered in the
future? What is God doing right now in
our generation, that may even be happening right in front of our eyes? What message is he raising up today to bring
great blessing to the Church for the generations to come? And how can we be a part of it?

A few years ago, in 2008, Time Magazine, a very influential
magazine in the U.S., identified ten of the top ideas that are changing the
world, and that will continue to change it in the future. They called these ideas “future
revolutions.” Of these ten ideas, only
one was a religious idea, an idea that, in their opinion, and I quote, marked a
“seismic” change in Christian thinking—an earthquake in Christian thinking. It’s an idea that is changing centuries of
Christian assumptions about our faith, and that will change Christianity for
centuries to come. Do you know what that
incredibly important idea is? What idea
is radically changing Christian thinking both now, and will continue to do so in
the future?

Before I tell you the answer, I want to tell you a little
story. Is that okay?

It’s the story of a boy that was a shepherd in Israel. I’m not talking about David. This is not a story from Bible days. It’s something that happened just nine years
before I was born, in 1947. You’ve heard
about Jericho, right? Where Joshua made
the walls fall down? Today, Jericho is
an Arab town. It’s part of the West Bank
you hear about in the news all the time.
The Arab shepherd boys in Israel will sometimes throw stones to keep the
sheep out of farmers’ fields, or get them to go where they want. Well, this Bedouin Arab boy was trying to
find a couple of sheep that were hidden behind some rocks in the cliffs near
Jericho. So he threw some stones to try
to get them to come out. When he threw
one of the stones, he heard a crash, like the sound of breaking pottery. So he went to find out what it was.

He saw a small hole leading into a cave. And since he was still small at that time, he
wriggled into the cave, and found strange old jars, big ones, with scrolls
inside. It turned out that these scrolls
were ancient, and included Bible scrolls from the time of Jesus. These were the first of the famous Dead Sea
Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed the accuracy of our Bibles
going back to the time of Jesus. This
was very important. Because before this,
scholars had questioned the accuracy of our Bibles. They said that they had been changed over the
years. But now we had proof that the same
Bible we read today was the one Jesus himself knew and saw. Copies of every book in the Old Testament were
discovered, except the book of Esther.
Altogether there were 220 Biblical manuscripts.

But other, non-Biblical scrolls were also discovered—about 650
of them. These were also important. Because they taught us what people were
thinking about in Jesus day, how they used certain words, what they were
thinking about religion. And this has
been clarifying our understanding of the New Testament in remarkable ways. Now we can better understand Jesus’ audience,
which means we can better understand the points he was trying to make, and the
language he was using to make them.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were the greatest discovery in a
century of spectacular archeological discoveries that traced back to 1850, when
archeologists first excavated Ninevah, the city where Jonah the prophet
preached, the capital of the Assyrian Empire.
This was the first Biblical city to be systematically excavated. Before this, scholars had mocked and
ridiculed the Bible as filled with fairy tales and myths. But one by one, Biblical cities and Biblical civilizations
rose out of the dust, confirming the truth of the Bible. As Jesus said, “if these are silent, the
stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). And
the stones have been crying out, all right.

Did you know that 50 individual people mentioned in the
Bible have so far been confirmed by archeology?
And these are not only kings.
Some are ordinary people, like Baruch the son of Neriah (Jer. 32:12,16,
etc.). He was the scribe of
Jeremiah. Not only has a seal impression
made by his personal seal been found, it even has his fingerprint on it. The kings of Israel and their dates in the
Bible have been confirmed all the way back to King David.

Evidence for the conquest and burning of Jericho and Hazor
by Joshua has been found (Josh. 6:24, 11:11).
Israel is now the most excavated country in the world. And all the discoveries have the same
message: the Bible is an accurate
historical record of events in the past.

There is more reason to believe the Bible today that at any
time since the events themselves took place.
We have more evidence of the truth of the Old Testament today than
people had even in Jesus’ day! And the New Testament, too, has been spectacularly confirmed
over and over again. One recent
discovery is the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem where Jesus sent the blind man to
be healed.

These fantastic discoveries, including the Dead Sea Scrolls,
help us understand not only the setting of the events in the Bible, but the
meaning of the events and the words recorded there more accurately than ever
before since the days it was written!
That’s a really big deal!

But that’s not all that God has been doing. If you remember, I told you that the Dead Sea
Scrolls, the greatest archeological discovery of all, were discovered in
1947. The very next year, God did
another amazing thing.

To explain this, I have to tell you another story. Is that okay?
We all know that the Jews were living in Israel in the time of Jesus,
right?

Well, 40 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection,
their nation was destroyed by the Romans.
Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed.
Thousands were killed, thousands were sold into slavery. In a few hundred years, after more troubles
and fighting, there were very few Jews left in Israel. They were scattered to all the nations of the world in
fulfillment of many, many prophecies in the Bible.

But in around 1890, they started to come back again, followed
by more and more Jews from all over the world. And then in 1948, just one year after the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls, Israel became a nation again.
This was also a fulfillment of dozens and dozens of prophecies in the
Bible. In fact, it’s the second most
prophesied event in the Bible. (The
first most prophesied event in the Bible is the ministry of Jesus.)

Now think about that.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which helps us understand more
about Jesus and the Bible, was followed almost immediately by the prophetic rebirth
of Israel as a nation—an event which itself is a fulfillment of the prophecies
of the Bible, and helps us better understand the Bible. Is that just a coincidence? Or is there some kind of message here for us
today?

Do you know why Israel was reborn? Israel became a nation again because of a
vote of the United Nations in 1947. Why
did the United Nations allow Israel to become a nation?

One important part of the reason was the tremendous shock of
the Holocaust in Europe. Six million
Jews were killed in Europe during WW II.
It was one of the most terrible events in history. Who did this?
A supposedly Christian nation:
Germany, home of Martin Luther and the Reformation! How could this happen? How could a Christian nation do something so
horrible?

It was because of what the priests and preachers had been
saying in the Churches for hundreds of years.
They taught that “The Jews killed Jesus.” That they were “Christ-killers.” And so Christians went out of their churches
to persecute Jews. This had been going
on since the 3rd century, when Christianity became anti-Semitic. But over the years, the attacks became more
and more violent.

At first, Christians were taught simply to stay away from
Jews and their synagogues. Synagogues
were sometimes attacked and destroyed.
But in the 6th cent., there were forced baptisms, in which
Jews were forced to be baptized as Christians against their will.

In the 12th cent., Christians started to kill
Jews, at the time of the Crusades, about 5,000 of them. This was a large percentage of the Jews in
Europe at the time. In the 15th cent., there was a persecution in
Spain in which two thousand Jews were burned at the stake. After that, more than 150,000 Jews were forced to leave
their homes in Spain. This was the
biggest event in Jewish history since the time of the Bible. France, England, and other countries also
kicked out all their Jews. So they went
to Eastern Europe.

But here horrible persecutions broke out in Poland (1648),
in which more than 100,000 were killed (the Chmielnicki massacres)! And then came the Holocaust, with six million killed, the
most horrible persecution in history.

Anti-Semitism is not just something the Nazis did. The reason the Nazis could do what they did
was because no one was willing to stand up against their hatred of the Jews. Many in the U.S. and in Europe shared their
feelings. Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford motor company, printed
and distributed anti-Semitic pamphlets all over the United States. Many in the U.S. accepted these views. Jews were not permitted to join certain clubs
and organizations.

When ships filled with Jews fled from the Nazis in Europe,
no one would take them in: not the
British, not the Americans—nobody. They
had to go back to Germany. It wasn’t
until 6 million Jews had died that the eyes of the Christian world were finally
opened. Only then did individuals and
churches begin to realize the horror of what Christians had been doing for
hundreds of years, and repent before God for our horrible sins against the Jewish
people.

Only then did we begin to admit that the abuse,
mistreatment, and killing of Jews over more than a thousand years was a terrible
error, and a terrible, terrible sin against the gospel of Jesus Christ. And only then did we begin to realize the
error of the teachings that led to these horrible actions—teachings that had
distorted not only Christian actions, but also Christian doctrine for more than
a thousand years. This also caused
Christians to go back and examine their Bibles and see where we went wrong as
Christians.

And right then, just two years after the end of the war, the
nation of Israel was reborn. The rebirth
of Israel was a shock to many Christians.
They had been teaching that God had abandoned the Jewish people. But now he was fulfilling prophecies he had given them in
the time of the Bible. Dozens, even
hundreds of prophecies have been fulfilled in Israel, and still are being
fulfilled right now today. This means
that God isn’t finished with the Jewish people, that he still has a purpose and
a plan for them.

This is a big deal. It’s
an awesome historic moment, like something in the days of the Bible. And in fact, everything that is happening is
just as it was prophesied in the Bible! Through
this, God is speaking not only to Israel, but to the Church, correcting the
Church, changing the Church, showing where it has been wrong. This doesn’t just affect some
Christians. It affects all Christians
who have ears to hear. It affects how
all of us read the Bible.

Two huge events, within one year of each other: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the rebirth of
Israel. Both are having a huge impact on
how Christians read the Bible. Both are
forcing a major reevaluation of our actions, as well as our teachings and
doctrines.

These two hugely powerful events are what led to the big
change in Christian thinking I mentioned before, the one that Time Magazine
said is the most important idea to come along in Christian thinking for
hundreds of years. Can you guess what that
game-changing idea is, that even non-Christians have noticed, that is bringing
about a “seismic” change in Christianity?

The answer: “Re-Judaizing Jesus.” What does that mean? Recognizing that Jesus is Jewish. That the disciples are Jewish. That the Bible is Jewish. Now maybe you’re thinking, “Well, of course
Jesus was Jewish, everybody knows that!”
Well, you may know that now. But
when I became a Christian more than 30 years ago, to say that Jesus was Jewish
was considered an insult, even a blasphemy against Jesus. Jesus and the disciples were considered Christians and not
Jews. In Christian art, they were painted
to look like Europeans, with high foreheads and straight noses—even blond hair
and blue eyes—as they still are often today, while other Jews were shown with
big potato noses and claw-like hands.

Why is it such a big deal for the Church to admit that Jesus
is Jewish? When I first went to seminary
in the 1980’s, do you know what they taught us?
Greek philosophy: Plato,
Aristotle. Why? Because that’s how theology was done in the
Christian Church for more than a thousand years. Almost every trace of Jewishness in the Bible
was ignored or replaced with Greek thinking.

But how can that help us understand Jesus? Jesus was Jewish! He spoke to a Jewish audience, he taught from
a Hebrew Bible! What’s the point of
studying Greek thinking if you want to understand a Jewish speaker?

Today, of course, everyone (or almost everyone) realizes
that this was crazy—that to understand Jesus properly, of course you have to
study Jewish culture and society. If you
don’t, you will often misunderstand what he said.

But even though Christians around the world understand this
today, we’ve got a long way to go to correct more than 1500 years of incorrect
thinking. It affects our Bible
translations, it affects how we express our doctrines, it affects how we
worship, it affects almost everything.
We’re in a steep learning curve right now. But that makes this is an exciting time to be a Christian. Because this deep change in Christian
thinking is helping us get back in touch with the real Jesus of the Bible, to
understand his words more accurately, to enter more fully into the spirit of
his will for our lives and for the world.

This change of thinking is a big step for many of us. It takes a while to digest. And as with any big new idea in the history
of the Church, it’s sometimes easy for people to misunderstand.

The Reformation was a big new idea. But some people misunderstood for a while,
and began to teach crazy things. The
Pentecostal movement was a big new idea.
But some misunderstood, and began to teach crazy things. And it’s no different today. But in the end, this is going to be—in fact
it already is—a huge blessing to the Church.

Unfortunately, there are still many Christians and many
churches that are not even aware of the tremendous changes God is doing in the
Christian world in our generation. Can
you imagine being in heaven, and hearing someone say, yes I wish I had lived in
your generation when the Church was being restored to its Jewish Roots! How exciting that must have been! And you say, Jewish what? Really?
It’s like saying, yes I lived in the time of the Reformation, but I had
no idea anything like that was going on.
That would be a little embarrassing.

But I can tell you this for sure: God wants you to know what’s going on right
now in this moment of history! He wants
you to know how you fit into history!

The restoration of Israel is the second most prophesied event
in the Bible. It has tremendous
end-times implications, which we don’t have time to talk about today, but God
willing, we will be talking about in the next few weeks.

But God is not only restoring Israel. He’s also restoring the Church. He wants to correct our wrong ideas from the
past and raise up a purified and holy people to complete his work in these last
days. Why? Because we’re going to need all the extra
strength and Biblical power we can get as we enter the end of these
endtimes. The power of Satan over the
lives of people and nations is growing.
And we are going to need wisdom to stand. We’re going to need true Biblical power to
resist and defeat the temptations of our generation.

What about you? Do
you want to be a part of what God is doing in our generation? Can you feel the weight of history pressing
in on this moment? Today, in our
lifetimes, things are happening that kings and prophets desired to see. The great cloud of witnesses from all the
generations before us is looking on with great excitement to see what we will
do with this great moment that God has been preparing for so long. What about you? You have been born for this moment. God has placed you strategically in this
moment. How will you answer the call of
history, the call of this moment in time, the call of God on your life?

Let’s pray. Lord God,
we open our hearts to you. We open our
minds to you. We ask you to have your
way with us today. Speak to us,
Lord. Speak to us about our place in
history. Raise us up to be the people
you have created us to be, for this generation, for this moment in time. Thank you Lord. Speak to your people. Touch our lives. And we give you all the thanks and the praise
in Jesus’ name. Amen?

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About New Church

Join us at New Church in Taichung, Taiwan! The messages posted here are the Sunday messages shared with the church by Pastor Jeff Harrison. For more information about the church, click on the Church Info or Facebook Group links under the photo at the top of this page. For more information about Jeff, check out the link to his ministry website (To The Ends).